06 — The Non-Possessor Controversy
Later tradition placed St. Nilus of Sora at the head of the nestyazhateli, the “Non-Possessors,” in the great dispute over whether monasteries should own land worked by dependent peasants — and made his intervention at the Council of 1503 the dramatic public center of his life. These files treat that controversy with the source-criticism it requires: the first sets out the Council of 1503 and Nilus’s reported role there, flagging how much of the picture is later construction; the second sets out the underlying principle, drawn from Nilus’s own writings, that monks should live by their own labor and alms rather than by serf-worked estates.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)
The discipline of this section is the central one of the whole collection: to distinguish what Nilus actually taught (secure, from his writings) from the public role later tradition assigned him (much of it a construction of sixteenth-century polemic and nineteenth-century historiography). David Goldfrank’s critical work is the principal authority for that distinction, and it governs how these files are written. The principle of monastic poverty is genuinely Nilus’s; the dramatic council leadership is, in large part, retrospective.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The 1503 Council | The council on monastic estates and the tradition of Nilus’s intervention against monastic landholding — set out with the source-critical caveat that his leading role at 1503 is substantially a later construction. |
| Possessions and the Monastic Vocation | The principle, grounded in Nilus’s own Predanie and Ustav: that monks should live by the labor of their own hands and by alms, not by villages and estates worked by dependent peasants. |
See Also
- The Tradition (Predanie) and Letters — the writings that ground the principle of poverty
- Two Visions of Monasticism — the contrast with Joseph of Volotsk’s defense of monastic property
- The Trans-Volga Elders — the Non-Possessor current after Nilus
- Russian Monasticism — the monastic world the controversy concerned
References
- Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008.
- Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
- Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.